People always like getting free stuff. Two promo ideas 1). Offer 1-5 free color banner prints to your clients and prospects.. Many copiers can now print banners up to 12"W by 48" L . This feature is often not promoted. It costs you almost nothing but the customer might perceive as having value. It could be "Open for Business", "Happy Birthday," "Grand Re-Opening", whatever. The customer can dictate the content. You can add a little logo in the corner of the banner "supplied by ABC Copier...

An excellent webinar on how to virtually prospect. https://vimeo.com/407322860/7ef91c5b72 What to say, what to do from America's #1 Sales Outsourcing Provider of the Year. https://www.koppconsultingusa.com/

I just created my own YouTube channel doing product videos with future ones planned mostly focussed on MS365. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OotckdOtEg ... and I am working Linkedin a lot more in different ways. Most of the people I know say they have never gotten a lead from Linkedin. They think of this site as a static business card talking about who they are and not what they can do for the customer. They never post to Linkedin. Like most things, Linkedin requires almost daily work to...

SSG that's an awesome video! You can send links to clients, and direct them to your channel. It's a virtual demo that keeps on giving. Kudos I have some of the same issues with getting appointments through Linkedin, however I know of several peeps that use Linkedin as their only source for prospecting and they are doing well. I will keep working it since I have a Navigator account now

I was in a food broker warehouse and a sleep apnea clinic today installing new copiers. You can video conference all you want but some industries that require the manufacturer or trade of physical goods do not lend themselves to the digital life. Nevertheless, I feel that video conferencing is a vital new skill to learn as long as the Corona Virus pandemic exits. We can talk to customers on the phone, we can email them but often now we cannot meet them in person. Of course, you cannot turn a...

I was hoping that day thirteen would be a lucky number for me. It wasn't and I'm still hanging in their with zero orders since I started working remotely. I had a tough time going to sleep last night, the mind was still running, thoughts of what to if this that or the other thing happens. Even with two sleeping pills it was not a good night. Think I finally dozed off somewhere in the 1AM area. Thursday has started just like every other day. By 8am I was at the PC and going through my CRM to...

Yup, it's now been three solid weeks since I was optioned to the remote workforce. Look at that it's 8:35PM and I'm early for writing these blogs. Hoping that means I'll get a nights sleep. Let's see tonight I'll start with some numbers. About forty calls made to mostly current clients, then another thirteen emails to those clients. One appointment (MS TEAMS), one share Stratix Linkedin thread, one shared Stratix Facebook thread and three Linkedin inmails. Opportunities developed stands at...

This blog will be one of the longer running blog series. NJ just locked down for another 30 days, that statement from the Governors Office came today. In addition an additional lock down was placed on all county and state parks. While it seems that the infection rate is slowing down, the media is mostly giving us the bad along with a few specs of hope here and there. I follow the numbers on a daily basis but I'm somewhat concerned that more peeps will be out and about as the better weather...

Arriving home from Aruba on the 2nd of March and all was fine on that late evening ride from Newark Airport to my home in Highlands. Never ever did I think I would be confined to my house for this long. Never ever did I think that I would go three weeks without an order. Never ever did I think I would be trapped in my home office and not be able to meet and greet prospects and clients. Never ever did I think that a virus could virtually bring a country to it's knees. This is our new normal,...

Before I get started on my day I'd like to share a Youtube video from BTA and Brent Hoskins. BTA has some excellent resources for dealers to navigate through these tough times. COVID19 Today in New Jersey we had our highest one day death toll to date. I believe it was somewhere around 246 souls that passed in the last 24 hours. Today our Governor notified us that all non-essential construction will be shut down as of Friday at 5PM. There goes the next to last bit of the economy that was...

Another day, another dollar. Actually a great reminder that we can make what ever we want when we want. I may need to bag that for the better days that lie ahead. Our brilliant Governor just extended the "stay at home" order until May 20th! That's what I heard on the news today. I need to double check that, and if it's true I'm thinking that he'll be bumping heads with our President in the near future. Says he'll re-evaluate the states progress at that time. We need to open the state back up...

Make no bones about it, I'm mentally drained. Jersey is still the same and I don't want to keep harping on what's going on here. What was cool today is Greg Walters & I had our third installment of "How to Sell Copiers in the Age of Corona Virus. For those that haven't caught the first three episodes it's basically me and Greg talking about what's going on and shooting ideas back and forth. What I liked about today is that we turned the mics on to hear from others in our Zoom meeting. We...

Okay, okay I did put a few hours in on Good Friday, however I made sure I finished up before noon. Good Friday was a listed company holiday but I wanted to put in the extra time since the company I work for has always been there for me. Those are those months and or quarters when you kind of suck and aren't getting the job done. We'll all had them and most of us are experiencing it right now. Looking back on last week I was about to book $20K in revenue. Looking forward I've got a shot at...

Yay! Friday night and the weekend lays ahead! Not so fast grasshopper since tomorrow is going to be in the high thirties and raining in the AM. Maybe we'll see a high of 50 degrees. Typically this time of year is prime for combing the beaches and finding money. Well not really finding money but finding sea glass, jingle shells and hard clam shells that I turn into wampum. For me each piece of sea glass can mean $10 a pop. The shells are worth the effort because I'll also turn them into...

Ah day twenty-two which marks a full selling month of working remote. No driving, no buying coffee, no traffic, no rude drivers, no tolls, no gas and not many buyers was the plot of month one. Wow, could I really still be working remote for another month? Many times when I'm in the office and cutting it up with new reps I'll pose this question to them, "what type of day is it today?". Then I wait and wait and finally I'm told it's rainy, sunny, warm or cold. I then tell them the correct...

Tell me how this happens? My wife starting ordering food from a local company in New Jersey. I like it, she likes it and we're pleased with the service and the food. We started using them at the end of last year so it's not a COVID19 thing. One of the things I like is that in every book there is a recipe, instructions and a gloss brochure. Yup you guessed it..., the documents are printed in color and it means potential prospect! Maybe production also. Inspection of the box provided no phone...

There was some good news today in that the Feds released their plans for States to get back to work in a three phase operation. Seems each State will have different time lines depending if they meet the conditions that were set forth today. New Jersey is on lock down until the 15th of May. Could we see some of the restrictions lifted soon? I'm thinking no since we're one of those nanny states. This may be one of my shorter blogs and the reason for that is because I spent 5 of my eight hours...

The end of the day was pretty cool for me. After 5pm I had the chance to speak with a dealer principal out on the West Coast. Yes, things are just as bad out there as here in New Jersey. But we really didn't speak about COVID19 that much, instead our talk was about how the industry has changed in ten years and where are industry is going in the next ten years. It's always great to hear from dealer principals that still have the desire to go after it in this business! Yes, there are still...

Yay it's Thursday and that means it's time for the Greg & Art lunch chat hour! Today was a great chat session and there were some chats about post recovery and how we can add our experiences to our value proposition. Another awesome question was posed as to how dealers are getting their PPE gear. I never even thought about the PPE thing. Drivers, techs, installers and maybe even sales people could be required to don PPE gear when entering an office now and in the future. In addition we...

I thought this would be appropriate to start off today's blog Another closing day and I ain't got no orders I got some opportunities 'cause i just made some calls How I wish I had someone to sell to I'm in an awful way Right, so juiced up the lyrics a bit from the Sam Cookes rendition of "Another Saturday Night". My personal favorite is Cat Stevens version. If any one else would like to fill in the rest of the lyrics, then have at it. Could be a fun exercise for everyone! It was another day...

Another day another dollar, you never know what tomorrow will bring you, the harder you work the luckier you get. If you're a consistent follower of my blogs you'll see that I use those statements quite often when blogging. I've never shied away from hard work in fact I quit high school in mid-way through the 11th grade because I wanted to make money. Yes, I had the desire and the determination to make money but I was missing one key factor. At sixteen I didn't know how to work hard or maybe...

Day Forty-Five and in no time it will be a full quarter since being optioned to the home office. Our blessed Governor post this on Face-book today and the response was WILD! Of course you can only guess at who captioned it with "The fool on the hill". Within a few short hours there were more than 5,000 responses with 90% or more of them being negative. Geesh I wonder why? Monday was a good day since I was able to roll through my list of things to do pretty quickly. In addition I also...

Yesterday I had my first appointment in the field in more than two months. It was time to get back in business attire, that meant the dress shoes needed to be shined, the pressed slacks removed from the closet and of course that neatly pressed dressed shirt that's been on hiatus for the past 10 weeks. Looking in the closed I spotted a nice blue shirt with very think white lines and thought that would do the trick for the day. As I reached for the shirt I thought that this can't be my shirt,...

I am so looking forward to having an extra day off next week! The last 75 days have been extremely stressful. It will be nice to have three days to wind down a bit. Does anyone feel like me that this year is taking forever to unfold? Most years it seems that the months and quarters fly by. So far this year seems like everything is going in slow motion. I had a plan for today and it consisted of researching three possible existing clients for upgrades along with prospecting via the phone,...

For some reason sleeping last night didn't go that well. I worked late and by the time I finished last nights blog my mind was running at full speed as I tried to get to to sleep. Too many deals in my head! Last night my wife mentioned that she wanted to go see our granddaughter today. Am I bad guy? All I thought about was how much I wanted to get done today. I had a 1PM appointment that I moved to 3PM with a net new suspect late yesterday. i made the time because it's what we do. This...

This will probably be one of those shorter blogs tonight, however you never know once I start writing. A few minutes ago (it's 10PM) I just set an appointment for this Friday with a net new production prospect. I had emailed him earlier in the day and a few minutes ago I received the reply that yes Friday at 10AM works. Let me touch on the email a bit. The subject line was "hope you are well" and the base of the email spoke more about new 5th station color technology that could increase...

Many times you'll see me use the phrase "the harder you work the luckier you get". Many years ago Jack Carroll (Partner with Century Office Products) use to tell me this every time I brought in a decent size order. The first time I met Jack was way back in 1986 and that was the year I started my dealership Atlantic Office Systems in New Jersey. After selling the business to my partners in 1998 (best thing I ever did) I took a sales position with Century Office Products in New Jersey. I...

Over the years I've spent many days working from my home office. One thing I have going for me is that my office office is much bigger than my cube! Today was a little sobering since I'm not sure when I'll be back in the office, could it be two weeks, two months or the end of the summer? All uncharted territory for most of us in office equipment sales. Today was the first day of our marching orders to work from home. However, I did have to make a trip to the office to get a few addition...

Today is the day! Spent most of the morning prepping for two on-line meetings from about 8AM-10AM. I wanted to make sure I had shot at getting at least one of these in before the end of the month. Both are with two existing accounts. My first meeting was 11AM, my second was set for 2PM. I also spent about and hour getting connected to Microsoft Teams which is also one of our requirements while working remotely. More to come on this. Just about 10:AM I received an email from my 2PM and he had...

I'm not sure where to start...., the fact that the tri-state area is closed except for essential businesses, New Jersey is now in the top three of Corona Virus infections, the 8PM-5AM curfew in effect in NJ, the State of New Jersey releasing 1,000 prisoners from jail because they may have been exposed to the virus. I guess my message to everyone is that every day that passes we're getting closer to the day that all of this will be over. The fact that I'm continuing to work and prospect (not...

Seems every morning is identical to the last one. What keeps flashing through my mine is Bill Murray and Groundhog Day. Still no end in site for the lock down in the tri-state area. The infection rates continue to increase each and every day. Enough about the bad stuff. Let's focus on the good stuff. Today was CRM day and what I called soft prospecting today. The first course of action was to weed out the crap (all the small stuff) and maintain a better focus on those larger accounts. I...

Starting today my wife is now working from home, thus I had the pleasure of setting her office up in one of our spare bed rooms. I really do hate being the IT guy at home. Never fails that it's my fault that when there's a network or connectivity issue. Never the less that telechat appointment I had for this AM cancelled early and rescheduled for next week. The only saving grace to the day is that one of my clients asked me to provide them with final docs for a wide format MFP. Not holding...

There's no light at the end of tunnel. My thought is that the tri-state area will peak before the other parts of the country, thus while we're going down other geo areas will still be fighting the battle. If someone asked me to guess, I'd guess that we're another three weeks away from the lock down being lifted. Think about that..., that would be make it six weeks! That's more than ten percent of the year and I still have weeks of vacation to take. Hitting numbers is going to be a challenge,...

Sorry everyone, I'm going to make this short and sweet tonight. On a positive note today I receive and email from one of my clients that they like the first of 2 proposals that they reviewed and is looking at a May 1st timeline to move forward. Now I won't count my chickens yet, but that's the best news I've had all week. We scheduled a follow up in two weeks to see if we're still at square one with this virus. Oh ya, and this is a $60K opp. I had a chat with Greg Walters this AM and he told...

My morning started off the same as the last three mornings. "Got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, made my way downstairs and drank a cup (coffee)." That lyric is from the "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles and a song that was featured in 1967 from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I thought that would be an appropriate lyric to start our blog with because I'm thinking there are many more mornings to come that will be identical to the last four. I heard from a good source today...

Day Six and not much relief in site in New Jersey. We're still in lock down mode and now have the second largest number of infections in the US. There's a few cluster of infections in New Jersey that keep growing at an alarming rate. As of today there are no infections in the town where I live, however I don't think that will hold up much longer since more surrounding towns are reporting higher infections. Maybe the only savings grace is that we have the Ocean to east and the Bay to the...

Busy, busy day for me. I started at 7:30AM and it's now 9:45PM, I figure I still have another 30 minutes or so to go. One thing I noticed today is that the pace of industry press releases as slowed to a crawl. Tomorrow marks the last day of the year for most copier manufacturers, I can only image the deals that are available for dealers right now. Yes, it's one of those years that will go down in the history of the industry. Today was interesting to say the lease. I had 40-50 contacts in my...

WTF eleven days! Another late night issue for me again. It's sometime after 10PM, thus this will be another short blog again. Today our dealership had a TEAMS meeting set for 11AM. The plan was to lay out the strategy for the next 30 days or so. Yes, it seems like another 30 days of remote working is in order. I am also very thankful for that, because at least I have the ability to produce. I can't go over the details because it just doesn't make good business sense with competitors reading...

Mondays, whether you hate or love them Mondays can sometimes define your week. Do you have a favorite Monday song? Mine is "I don't like Mondays " by the Boomtown Rats. Yes the eighties, yes I'm a boomer and yes the eighties was an incredible time to cut your teeth in the copier industry. I could write some stories that would rock your world because they surely did rock mine. Some of you reading this blog may have heard me tell you about the eighties and it's something I just may put in...

Every now and then we have one of those days. When I'm waiting for a deal to develop I'll calling it "waiting for the ball to travel". Let the ball get deeper before you hit that homer. Today was one of those days that I waited for the ball to travel. What I mean by that is that I took a much needed mental day from prospecting. Today was a perfect day for that since I had four meetings on tap. One was our weekly sales TEAMS meeting and the other three were with prospects. In addition I had...

Yay! Our Governor is opening State and County Parks on May 2nd....with conditions with social distancing. Getting to hate that "social" crap. Many people are furious in New Jersey about the handling of the shut down along with not having the ability to get outside. After pressure the Gov caved to the pressure. However, here's what I think, we'll have such an influx to the parks and beaches from knuckle heads (govs favorite word) and out of state peeps that he will close the parks on Monday.

Yippee! Tomorrow is Friday woohoo! Seems like Sunday will be the best day of the week and finally a day in the seventies. Can you guess what I'll be doing? Nope, not the beach since Sandy Hook National Recreation Area is still closed. Give up yet? My day will be spent pulling weeds and not the weed you smoke. From about 5PM till about 9PM tonight I was thinking about what the frak am I going to write about tonight? It's not an easy task to write every day let alone find that one thing you...

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